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The Civil Service Excellence and Innovation Awards are held each year to publicly recognise excellence and innovation across the Civil Service and showcase best practice in Civil Service organisations. The 2018 awards were presented at a ceremony in the Dublin Castle on Thursday 23 November.
The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine won an award for Excellence in Collaboration in achieving Access to the Chinese Market for Irish Beef. This was a long term project involving sustained collaboration across a number of Divisions in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in particular the Embassy in Beijing, and the Bord Bia team in Dublin and Shanghai. The team cooperated with the Chinese Embassy in Dublin to organise important inward visits, generously hosted by Irish farm families, which were invaluable in building key relationships; and worked closely with the Irish meat industry to understand and meet Chinese requirements.
The lasting benefit of the project was market access for beef to China which was announced on 16 April 2018, when Ireland became the first Western European beef exporter to secure access.
Since the initial announcement six beef plants are now approved to export beef to China and export of product commenced in June 2018.
Minister Creed noted; ‘the opening of the Chinese beef market presents an exciting opportunity for the entire Irish beef sector, from farmers right through to processors’.
In addition, a strong successful model for internal collaboration, cross-Department and agency collaboration and a close working relationship with industry stakeholders and the Government and administration of an export destination has been developed, which can serve as a template for further market access efforts. Minister Creed congratulated the award winners and noted that ‘a key feature was working closely with Team Ireland in China to ensure every opportunity to further our access goal was used, this included promotional work by Bord Bia and hosting important inward visits’.
Commenting on the awards, the Secretary General of the Department Brendan Gleeson said; “these awards are a true recognition of the excellence of the civil service”. He went on to note that; “in the current climate with an increased focus on international markets and global trade and partnerships, the Chinese beef access model provides a template for collaboration, relationship building and harnessing a number of strands over a sustained period to achieve a goal.”

Note for editors
• China is now Ireland’s third biggest market for agri-food exports overall. Dairy exports reached €667 million and pig-meat exports were over €100 million in 2017. These were the two largest categories of food exported to China, and for both of these commodities China was the second largest destination market.

• As Chinese demand for meat has quadrupled over the last 30 years and the country now consumes one quarter of the world’s meat supply, there is every reason to believe that the beef industry will be just as successful.